Back in August 2008, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official Google Translate for iPhone app is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.

Speak to translateThe new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.

Full-screen modeAnother feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.

And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.

@AndroidChromeOS, Apple does support Google. Google is the default search engine for Safari on Mac and iPhone. On a Mac you can right-click on any word and search it in Google, system-wide. Apple use Google for their maps service too.

SpeechTrans iPhone app uses Nuance and is 95% accurate in Speech Recognition, unlike Google's 60% Speech Recognition Accuracy. If you want to magically be able to speak multiple languages check out www.SpeechTrans.com or search for SpeechTrans on the App store. SpeechTrans also has Facebook Chat Integration so you can speak to people across the world in different languages through Facebook!

Google, you should consider adding Dari and Pashtu to the supported languages. I realize that Arabic and Farsi are already on the list, but the vast majority of Afghans don't speak either of those languages. This app could be extremely useful to deployed military members, or anyone else in Afghanistan who doesn't speak the languages. Please consider this for your next update.

Google, you should consider adding Dari and Pashtu to the supported languages. I realize that Arabic and Farsi are already on the list, but the vast majority of Afghans don't speak either of those languages. This app could be extremely useful to deployed military members, or anyone else in Afghanistan who doesn't speak the languages. Please consider this for your next update.

I support google as well for developing apps (any software really) for other devices, even if they don't respond in kind, and think they should be commend for offering so many services at either low cost or no cost. Dont know if everyone has seen the google voice apps as well... if you haven't you should check it out. Way to go Google!

Unless I'm missing it, it seems like there's no easy to way to take the translation and put it into an email, SMS, etc.. Dragon Dictation does a good job of that, but clearly this will eventually make that app obsolete.. Is that functionality to come??

With the audio capability , I see this as the beginnings of what will eventually grow to become a technological babelfish. This will make our world smaller and I implore google to invest heavily in enabling the audio aspects of this technology so most languages are supported. This is the future ! If only the technology was widely for our troops years ago.

One of Google's best apps. And, it's free! A nice addition would be for the app to capture words from a picture and translate. To "iphone" or "android" haters: I believe Google does a fair job at mixing and matching where it chooses to release an app first.